


Into the Black

by mischiefsloth



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Gen, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-12-07 06:56:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18231458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischiefsloth/pseuds/mischiefsloth
Summary: Clay Jensen has a very good reason for obstructing justice, but he knows better than most that when it comes to the legal system, justice is not the same as fairness. ( Or the one where Clay ends up in a juvenile detention center, and it goes about as well as you'd expect for Evergreen's most courageous nerd. )





	1. Out of the blue

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: this chapter is from Justin's POV, which means lots of swearing and a bit of a wandering focus. If either bothers you, I suggest waiting for chapter two, since this one mostly covers the events at the end of episode 2x13 and you won't miss a tremendous amount skipping it.

Somewhere much too close, sirens were wailing.

Justin couldn’t see the flashes of red-white-blue coloring the scene yet, but he knew it wouldn’t be long, and it struck him how funny it was that those colors meant freedom to so many people when to him they’d only ever meant trouble.  How old had he been, the first time his mom was arrested? The time he’d had to go to that foster home that smelled like feet, before he’d had Bryce to offer up some fancy lawyer whose retainer cost more than their rent. For all that he hated Bryce now – and he did, he _hated_ him for Jess, for Hannah, for Clay – he would never forget the undeniable benefits of having a trust-fund superstar for a best friend.  He couldn’t. It wasn't like he hadn’t _tried._  Each prick of the needle was a silent prayer for amnesia, but no high lasted forever. It was futile, as Clay would say. Plain fucking stupid.

For someone who regularly used SAT words in casual conversation, Clay was also plain fucking stupid. A total and complete dumb-ass. He was the bravest, most righteous kid Justin had ever met, which was maybe why he routinely forgot to use his brain. It was like his heart was a power surge, and his mind had to shut down to prevent total system destruction.

Which is how they ended up here, a god damn assault weapon hanging limply in Clay’s hand while the sound of sirens grew louder.

Justin had a thousand questions, but only one made its meek way past his lips.

“This is fucked up, right?”

He sounded like a kid again, scared as shit, screwing his eyes closed and covering his ears so he wouldn’t see the way they manhandled his mom into the back of the cruise car, or hear her cussing them out for it.  He’d needed her, and they were taking her away.

Were they going to take Clay too?

Would he stand there, helpless, and let it happen?

He couldn’t voice that question. Then again, he didn’t need to. All three of them already knew the answer. _Why should this time be any different?_

Clay was the only hero here. He was gazing down at the gun as if appalled to see it still clutched in his hand, but when he spoke his voice was steady. He sounded... resigned?

“Yeah.” 

One word. A single confirmation. But the answer just raised a more important question, and Justin asked it out loud without meaning to.  
  
"What do we do now?" 

He’d never been the plans guy. He’d made a couple attempts, but they all went to shit. All three of them knew that, too. When he’d wanted to stop Clay passing on the tapes, his best plan had been _staging a suicide_. End the little bastard, he’d said. Shut him down. It was all bullshit. The closest he’d come was stealing his fucking bike, and even that had been mostly on accident. He’d forgotten he’d put it in the trunk until Alex dropped him off at his mom’s and left him with it.

“Go back inside,” Clay said.

This time, Justin hesitated. He hadn’t the first time he heard those words – earlier that night, when Tyler still held the gun and had been swinging it purposefully towards him. Towards  _Jess_. He’d pushed her back toward the gym door, and hadn’t turned around until he’d heard it slam behind him. Then he’d locked it, and let Jess wrap her arms around him as if he deserved the warmth and comfort she'd been giving him.

He hadn’t.

Clay had still been outside. He’d left him there.

Again he’d been on the wrong side of a locked door.

He’d tried to pull away from her, but there had been more strength in Jess’s skinny arms than he remembered. “Please,” he’d begged. “I have to go back out there.”

“No. Justin, that’s crazy!” Jess had sounded afraid, and he’d fucking hated that. He’d never wanted to be the reason she was scared. Never again. But he’d known Clay was scared too. He’d never heard that pitch in his voice - not when he’d put a gun to his own temple on Bryce’s fucking front lawn, not in the passenger seat of Alex’s car with the headlights off and the speedometer climbing. 

He remembered thinking: _Jess is safe. Clay isn’t._

But Jess had only stared at him, eyebrows raised, as if she had read every thought, as if they’d appeared above his head in a bubble like in one of Clay’s old comics. He still couldn’t decide if reading him was really easy, or if that was just another way Jess was _spectacular._  

“Tony will be there any second,” she’d said.

And fuck, Justin had forgotten about Tony Padilla. Clay _wasn’t_ alone, or wouldn’t be for long, and Tony was better at crisis management, no contest. So they’d waited until they’d heard the squeal of tires, the slamming of a car door, and then him and Jess had both rushed out, footsteps falling in hurried unison as they’d run toward Clay.

Now he was being told to leave again.

“No. Fuck, Jensen we’re not - ”

‘We’re not going anywhere, Clay.” Jess was using her “assertive” tone, and Justin had never heard anyone argue with her when she busted that out. She sounded calm, but it was different from Clay’s detached calm. It sounded more natural. Almost enough to make him believe it was the truth.

But none of them was fucking _calm_.

For the second time that night a car was careening to the curb outside of Liberty High, but this time it was joined by two, three, _four_ more cruisers, all of which turned off their sirens within the span of seconds, leaving a ringing silence before the low thudding bass of the school dance rose up to fill it. Had no one told the DJ about the crisis unfolding outside? Were most of his classmates still on the dance floor, buzzed and oblivious? If they were, he hated them for it. He fucking envied them for it, too.

Justin shuffled sideways, just enough to put himself between the cops and Jess.

“Drop the weapon!”

The command cut through the night, amplified and carrying, but not a single cruiser door opened or SWAT team emerged. Justin imagined them in there, behind the metal and glass, their doughnut-filled bellies straining against bullet-proof vests. Were they gripping their tasers? Pointing their guns?

“Okay. Okay. I’m – I’m putting it down.”

By comparison Clay’s voice was so quiet. He let the strap loosen in his hand, the gun lowering slowly until it hit the asphalt.

“Good. Now hands up! All of you!”

Justin didn’t hesitate, and thank fuck neither did Clay. While his own arms flew upward as if he’d received an electric shock, Clay moved slowly, purposefully, which showed that he wasn’t a total dumb-ass _all_ of the time.

When Clay was told to take a step back, he did it.

When he was told not to move, he didn’t argue.

So maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be so bad.

Justin repeated the silent words as a mantra. Clay was complying. There were a dozen people who knew the truth about what happened, and Tyler’s car was still in the fucking parking lot. Clay was a hero. He’d probably get some kind of medal and be all obnoxious about it for the next month and a half.

This wouldn’t be so bad.

He kept thinking it, so why was it happening all wrong? Justin wanted to ask, but he was suddenly dodging too many questions to get out any of his own. It was Mr. Standall – no, _Deputy_ Standall – in front of him now, calling him _son_ , trying to coax the truth out of him, but Clay’s words rang in his head, incessant as the sirens had been just minutes ago.

_Don’t say anything, Justin! Tell everyone not to say anything._

Those had been Clay’s last words to him, just before he’d been shoved into the back of a cruiser, hands cuffed behind him. He didn’t cuss the cops out for the way they handled him. He just whipped his head around so he could catch Justin’s eyes before the car door slammed shut.

Justin was still on parole. He couldn’t – _shouldn’t_ – lie to the police.

But there was the fifth annulment or whatever the fuck it was called. They couldn’t _make_ him talk. And Clay’s arrest was temporary. Lainie was a lawyer. She’d gotten him released from juvie when he’d actually _committed_ a crime. She’d have Clay out in an hour, and they’d go home, and Matt would make popcorn, and Clay might not get a medal but at least he’d be _safe_.

So as Justin watched the last cruiser, the one carrying Clay, turn out of the parking lot and onto the road, leaving the world dull in the absence of the bright red-white-blue, he thought the words again.

Maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t be so bad.  


	2. Better to burn out

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clay arrives at the Evergreen County Juvenile Detention Center.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this update was so long in coming, but hopefully it won't be as long a wait for chapter three. 
> 
> As a warning, this chapter contains some brief homophobic language and depicts a panic attack. If either of these things are triggering for you, please don't read on.

This was going to be bad.

At least this time Clay knew it in advance. He’d been blindsided in the past, the _bad things_ striking unexpectedly, crumbling the ground beneath his feet and swallowing him whole. Jeff. Hannah. Tyler. They had been earthquakes. This, this was more like an approaching hurricane; it was too late to evacuate, but he knew what had to be done. Just shelter in place and wait for the storm to pass.

Then assess the damage.

He used to judge people who ignored evacuation notices and mayoral warnings, as if the words _state of emergency_ weren’t, by definition, a crisis. When the house was on fire, you got out of the house. It was that simple. Now he kind of missed being the type of person who knew things with that resolute certainty, who could roll his eyes at news clips of stranded survivors in flooded east coast cities and think: _what did they expect?_

Most people were stupid. He’d learned that as a kid, and earnestly knit it into his worldview because knowing it made him a little bit superior. It made him different in a  _positive_ way, which was a small consolation for all the different that just got his head shoved into toilets. Kids called him a nerd, they called him gay, they called him a loser, but they never called him _dumb_. And that was something. So for all his existential reflection he’d somehow never landed on the simple truth that he was a person, and people were fucking stupid. All of them.

Sometimes, often,  _especially_ ,him.

Lately he’d learned that sometimes you couldn’t leave your home just because it was it burning. Sometimes you had stay and let it turn you both to ash.

It was a decent metaphor, he thought, which meant he’d made _something_ of his hour long wait in the holding cell of the Evergreen County Juvenile Detention Center. He was starting to think that they’d forgotten about him, but his better sense told him this was just bureaucratic inefficiency.

Or a deliberate and cruel preview of his new and decidedly less-improved life.

Clay didn’t like being confined. He could feel panic creeping into his body, from the tingling in his fingers to the slow and steady pressure in his chest, which compressed his lungs and squeezed out every breath he managed to gulp down. He’d had hundreds of panic attacks in his life, but somehow each one still felt new, catastrophic. Like maybe this time he really _was_ dying.

He barely registered someone calling his name, but it was enough to tug him back toward reality.

A guard was standing in the doorway, formidable despite the fact that he was kind of scrawny and only maybe an inch taller than Clay. Standing next to the burly police officer who’d “accompanied” Clay here, the prison guard looked downright meager. He spoke tersely, as if Clay had already been in the midst of arguing with him, though for the first time in months _combative_ was the last thing he felt.

He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to be home, snarking at Justin for taking the last piece of pizza, and vetoing whatever boring movie his father suggested they watch.

Not being led through stark corridors to a hall marked _intake_ , not emptying his pockets and putting everything on him in a clear plastic bin with the words _personal effects_ scrawled on it in sharpie. Definitely not standing shivering after a low-pressure shower, waiting for a stranger on the other side of the door to pass through a worn and scratchy towel, then a somewhat-but-barely less scratchy jumpsuit.

He hadn’t expected to keep his shoes, or his clothes. He _had_ expected to continue wearing his own socks and underwear. Clay forced himself not to think of how many others had worn these ones before him.

Though maybe one of them had been Justin.

It was a measure of just how fucked up his life had become that that realization calmed him a little. He hated when Justin borrowed anything of his, would have been livid, _murderous_ , if he’d ever caught him in his underwear drawer – but this wasn’t his bedroom, and given the hundreds of other boys who’d passed through these halls, the idea of sharing intimates with his brother was still vastly preferable.

It was a strange comfort, but he wrapped it around himself anyway. As he followed his guard through the halls, he imagined each footfall landing where Justin’s had been just a few weeks before.

He followed his brother’s footsteps, and kept breathing.

“Wait here.”

The guard used the same tone now as when he’d called him for intake, but this time Clay very nearly rolled his eyes. His opportunity to run had come and gone. _Waiting_ was about the only choice left to him.

He wasn’t left alone long. When his guard reappeared, he was joined by a large man who reminded Clay of what Coach Patrick might look like if he traded his track suit for a button-down. Beside him was a kid in a matching D.O.C jumpsuit, who was giving Clay the kind of affable smile he was used to seeing on Marcus Cole, like he just couldn’t wait to recruit him to the juvie social activities council.  

Which was definitely, probably, not a real thing.

“We’re gonna give you the grand tour,” the kid said, in exactly the way Marcus would have done. “C’mon.”

And again, what choice did he have?

Not-Marcus (who had introduced himself as Peter) did most of the talking, but Clay was hyper-aware of the way the guard and the warden flanked them, like silent sentries. He was taken past the pods – which, he guessed, were _cells_ , just given a more Orson Scott Card name – and then to the cafeteria, the library, the small outdoor “recreational yard”, and finally to the school room.

The place reminded him of Liberty, with more electronically secured doors and fewer kids.  Strangely, that wasn’t much of a revelation.

“Dinner’s at 4:30, then we get some time ‘til lights out. Mostly we read, or watch one of the movies they've got for us in the dorm. We can leave our rooms at 7:00 for breakfast, then classes start at like 8:45. Anyway, you’ll figure it out, man.”

Peter talked constantly, while Clay listened with obligatory nods and ‘uh huh’s. The tour ended back at C pod, where Peter left them with a friendly wave, and Clay was finally led to the welcome solitude of his room.

It was not what he’d imagined.  

The rest of this place might have passed for a high-security recreational center, but this… this room belonged in a prison.

The white brick walls looked austere under a strip of fluorescent light, and the mattress was no thicker or softer than the mats the wrestling team sometimes left on the floor of the boy’s changing room. Folded on the foot of it was a single sheet and a woolly, coarse looking yellow blanket. The room’s only other furnishings were a metallic stool in front of a matching mounted wedge that was passably imitating a desk, and across from it a steel toilet, with no seat.

The door to his cell clicked as the guard closed it. Clay stood in the center of the room for a moment, then slipped into his bed without bothering to make it, and cried himself to sleep.

 

*   *   *

Apparently, Saturday meant a later wake-up and no class. Clay woke up shivering, and found his one and only blanket had slid to the grimy tile floor. He had pulled it over himself when lights-out had, ironically, woken him up the night before. His muscles protested the time he’d spent on the pad-like mattress, but when he finally crawled out of bed he was met with a small, simple surprise: his cell had a window, a small rectangle of sunlight he’d missed before.  

His room was unlocked at 8:00, though Clay only learned the time once he reached the cafeteria.

Now he really _was_ back at Liberty, albeit a slightly alternative universe Liberty, where all the girls had vanished and everyone wore the same understated beige jumpsuit. And there was no option of brown-bagging a lunch.  One glance at the gelatinous orange eggs and dry toast told him he’d be missing his mother’s sad attempt at a sandwich before the end of the day.

His breakfast was served in a plastic, fast-food style container, with flimsy plastic cutlery.

Mercifully, it also came with coffee.

Clay knew he was not the only new kid on the basis of one thing alone: he was not the only one lingering on the perimeters of the cafeteria, skittish as prey animals approaching a watering hole on the African savanna. There were four rows of tables, each of them filling up as the food line dwindled.

“Jensen!”

His name rose over the din, but it took Clay a full minute of scanning the crowd to find the source. Peter. Of course. The only kid there who actually _knew_ his name.

He was standing halfway down the furthest table, waving as if greeting an old friend. Clay didn’t hesitate.

“Shove over,” he was saying when Clay finally reached him. He felt as if a thousand eyes watched him climb awkwardly onto the bench, squeezed into the small space that had been made for him. “Thanks,” he mumbled, and hoped the payment for this mercy wouldn’t be _conversation_. He didn’t think he could handle Peter’s overabundance of charisma before he’d finished his coffee.

“First night’s always rough,” Peter said. His smile was almost convincingly sympathetic, but Clay could feel himself scowling. Everything here would cost him something, that was his first lesson. Apparently, a seat meant _commiserating_.

He didn’t want to make friends here. He had friends who needed him somewhere else.

“Yeah.” He’d mastered his brusque, one-word answers at family breakfast. He’d have to remember to thank his mother for the unintended training. As practiced, he chased the words with several forkfuls of egg, to delay the moment he’d be expected to speak again.

Unlike at family breakfast, Peter seemed happy to fill the space with words of his own. He seemed _nice_ , which Clay found inherently suspicious. Nice people didn’t end up in juvenile detention.

Except for Sheri.

And Justin.

And _him_. Was he still nice?

A little over a year ago, nice was just about Clay’s only defining quality. When anyone talked about him (which, for the most part, they _didn’t_ ) they always said how nice he was.

What did they say now?

_Any time one of the squeaky clean kids gets dirty, it’s pretty big news._

No, he wouldn’t think of Bryce now. If there was any goddamn justice in the world, it would be him here, eating repulsive eggs and pissing in a toilet three feet from his bed.

Clay took a gulp of coffee, the bitter flavor a perfect complement to his mood.

He was being melodramatic, but given the circumstances he thought he was entitled. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t _Bryce_ who’d be here in his place. It didn’t matter that this was his _choice,_ one that Justin had pleaded with him not to make. One that he could unmake. When his lawyer visited, he could choose to cooperate. They’d offer him a deal, and just like that he’d be out on probation.

But sometimes, you stayed in the burning the house.

All Clay had to do was close his eyes, and there was Tony, his dark brown eyes wide and afraid. Clay had never seen Tony afraid, and it hit him like a kick to the kidneys. This was his third strike. His _last_ strike. And he’d done it for Clay.

He’d helped him.  Just like he’d promised he would.  _Always._

Clay was only officially held on the charge of _obstruction of justice_ , which, unfortunately, had some of its strictest sentencing in the state of California. He’d have been out on bail if it weren’t for the fact that the court considered him at high risk of _continuing to_ _aid and abet a wanted criminal_.

So far they hadn’t charged him with conspiracy in relation to Tyler’s attempted crime, but according to his mother it was likely they _would_. It couldn’t be proven, but the police probably thought the threat of added jail time would intimidate him into giving them Tyler’s whereabouts.

They didn’t know him very well, obviously.

Maybe _stubborn_ was his defining quality now.  It wasn’t necessarily converse to nice, but it had more character to it. Nice didn’t have to mean passive. The version of Clay who'd believed otherwise had died when he’d heard Hannah’s voice over the static of a cassette, saying _if you’re listening to this tape,_ _you’re one of the reasons why_.

His passivity had killed a girl. A girl he loved.

He would _never_ make that mistake again.

He would eat his powdered eggs and stale toast, and sleep on a mattress no better than a wrestling mat. He would endure this, all of it, so Tony would not have to suffer something worse. When he closed his eyes, he’d try to picture Tony cruising in his mustang, one hand on the steering wheel, the other hanging out the window, fingers splayed to catch the wind. He’d make playlists in his mind… and when he left this place, maybe he’d make them for real. On cassette, so Tony could listen to them in his car. They’d reclaim tapes, make them something beautiful, something _theirs_.

He thought Hannah would be okay with it. For them.

The clattering of a cafeteria tray jolted Clay back to reality. His head spun, following the gaze of every boy in the room, to where one of the new kids – one of the _youngest_ kids - was crouched, clutching his belly. His tray was on the ground, contents spilled over the tiles, and his attacker gave it a kick before snarling, “stay outta my way, faggot,” and continuing on his way.   

There was quiet for a span of seconds, and then, at once, almost every boy in the room went back to their breakfast.

But not the boy who’d bent to retrieve his ruined meal from the cafeteria floor and toss it into the trash.

Not Clay, who a moment later was at the kid’s side, offering a consoling smile and the remnants of his own tray.

And not Peter, who’d reached out to stop Clay just a second too late, and now surveyed the scene with a stunned horror, like he was watching a pedestrian step out in front of a barreling transport truck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The drama escalates in the next chapter, as does the clony content. 
> 
> As always, thanks for reading & commenting! It's very appreciated.

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't abandoned Guiding Light, I promise. In fact, this story picks up around where that fic will end, and work as a sort of continuation. Unlike my other works, this one is completely plotted, so updates will be much more frequent! As always, thanks for your patience! Any feedback is always super welcome.


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